linking INTEGRITY

Integrity - use of values or principles to guide action in the situation at hand.

Below are links and discussion related to the values of freedom, hope, trust, privacy, responsibility, safety, and well-being, within business and government situations arising in the areas of security, privacy, technology, corporate governance, sustainability, and CSR.

Stopping data, identity theft via offshoring, 26.3.04

Companies depend on information to operate their business processes. Much of this information is stored and processed electronically, and is exchanged with business partners over computer networks, many of which are public.

The security of this information -- or data -- may be at risk owing to vulnerabilities, with potentially serious consequences to the business of a company or individual.

Data security addresses staff at a business process outsourcing centre who handle the data and put in place systems which guard against careless/criminal agents. It also involves putting in place laws that make it an offence to steal and misuse data.

As BPO involves job losses and has become very emotive, what the people in the US are saying is not so much that the networks extending to India are technically insecure but that 'God knows what those guys do with our tax and social security info; they won't even go to jail if they filch something'.

A key solution is to get the organisation certification for information security management systems or ISMS.

Extensive guidance on organisational aspects of risk assessment and control is given by the British Standards Institution code of practice for ISMS.

The certification is called BS7799-2.2002. It holds the key to mitigating the problem of "identity theft" while offshoring finance and accounts processes even before it arises.

Comments

"We shall need compromises in the days ahead, to be sure. But these will be, or should be, compromises of issues, not
principles. We can compromise our political positions, but not ourselves. We can resolve the clash of interests without
conceding our ideals. And even the necessity for the right kind of compromise does not eliminate the need for those
idealists and reformers who keep our compromises moving ahead, who prevent all political situations from meeting the
description supplied by Shaw: "smirched with compromise, rotted with opportunism, mildewed by expedience, stretched out
of shape with wirepulling and putrefied with permeation.
Compromise need not mean cowardice. .."